Staplers that press wire fasteners into stacks of sheet materials are typical means for securely joining packets of paper in schools, offices, and the home alike. When using a traditional stapler to fasten sheets together, fasteners are inserted at a pre-determined offset with respect to the sheets themselves. For example, the fastener might be placed half of an inch from the edge of a sheet. The result of a fixed offset is that, when stacking multiple packets or sets of fastened sheets, the fasteners of each set abut each other. This increases the amount of storage space required for sets of fastened sheets because the thickness of the abutted fasteners results in dramatically increased stack thickness and bulge in and around the location where such fasteners are in contact. This causes the sets to occupy greater volume than accounted for by the paper itself and further makes stacking, transporting, storing, and delivering the packets inefficient and unwieldy.
Attempts have been made to address this problem. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,639,078 to Mandel et al. discloses a system in which printed and collated sheets are automatically repositioned with respect to each other so that staples in printed packets do not cause any bulges created by stacked staples to interfere with outcoming packets. This solution is deficient because, once stacked to be placed in a binder or box or other container, the staples still abut, interfering with one another to create a space-inefficient bulge. U.S. Pat. No. 6,402,006 to Nunes et al. discloses a stapler selectively transitionable between a first and a second mode to allow a user to alternatively staple sheets at an angle to or parallel with an edge of the sheets. This solution is deficient because a user of the stapler must perform such a transition manually. Moreover, once a mode is selected, each successive staple is placed at a predetermined offset as discussed above, effecting the same space-inefficient bulge.
Other solutions have attempted to solve the problems by causing the staple itself to flatten against any secured sheets more than previously achieved. For example, U.S. Patent App. No. 2011/0062210 filed by Leung teaches an anvil adapted to fold over legs of the staple flat only once the legs have been driven straight through the sheet materials. U.S. Patent App. No. 2014/0203060 filed by Marks teaches a slotted anvil having restoratively biased arms that push any staple legs flat to secure packets together. Still, these solutions are deficient because, in the aggregate, volume added by even flat staples abutting one another still causes space-inefficiencies.
Although various proposals have been made to solve the problem, none of those in existence combine the characteristics of the present invention. Therefore, there is a need for a stapler that decreases the volume of stacked papers via an automatically repositioning assembly.